


Old Times

by icarus_chained



Series: Nigel and Nikola [7]
Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Aging, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Historical, Invisibility, The Cabal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-23
Updated: 2012-05-23
Packaged: 2017-11-05 21:39:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/411287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1959. Nigel is dying, and Nikola can't stay in the country. Saying goodbye, one last time.</p>
<p>Part 7 of the Nigel and Nikola series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Times

"I'll rob a bank in your honour," Nikola told him, gesturing grandiosely, that same irrepressible grin on his face. Standing over Nigel's chair, dark and gilded in the fading light, as scruffy as only a life on the run could make him. Nigel laughed up at him.

"Will you now?" he asked, amused, reaching up with a papery, translucent hand of his own. Damn near invisible at the best of times, these days. So close, so close to fading away. "Already got your eye on one, have you?"

"Yes, well. Lab equipment doesn't come cheap these days," the vampire answered, nose in the air and that laughing glimmer in his eyes. "And I am on something of a tight budget at the minute. Don't worry, though. It's all in the best of causes."

"I'm sure," Nigel drawled. "My legacy to the world. Training a kleptomaniac vampire so he can burgle the US Treasury." Not that it would that bad a legacy, on top of the real one ...

"Don't be ridiculous," Nikola dismissed, waving a hand. "What would I want with the Treasury? These days, it's the captains of industry you want to rob, not the State." Then, a slight souring of his expression. "Although I suppose it always was ..."

"Save the grudges," Nigel told him quietly. "Not much good, when the bastards are dead and buried." A small smile. "So if you've any against me, you'll want to hurry up and get to them, you know ..."

Nikola glanced down at him, expression flickering, some shadow slipping forward behind his eyes, though he did still attempt to smile. Did still attempt to wave it away with that little grin of his. Nigel smiled up at him, feeling something clench in his chest, some liquid, heavy thing. Damn stupid sod was such a soft touch, if you knew where to hit him. Poor stupid bastard.

"Is that so?" Nikola drawled softly. Lightly, for all the shadows in his eyes, and still grinning. Soft and mischievous, still the bloody child Nigel'd met seventy odd years before. The arrogant, playful bastard sneaking into Nigel's room with the last brush of evening, carrying the echoes of seven decades behind him. "Well, I'd better do that, then, hadn't I?"

He grinned, leaning down around the back of the chair, all a vampire's liquid grace in his movements, the old, dark thing vibrating beneath his skin, and honestly, Nigel should have been nervous. Should have been alarmed, seeing as how Nikola'd never been the most stable of them, but then ... But then he was faded these days, slipping softly into permanent invisibility, and there was nothing left in him that feared the laughing darkness in his friend's eyes. Nothing in him that flinched from the dazzling, shadow-etched grin on Nikola's face. He watched Nikola come, and laughed silently up at him.

And then a hand curled softly in Nigel's hair, gone white and loose years since, cupped against Nigel's cheek, and a pair of lips pressed softly to his forehead. Nothing more than that. Nothing harsh or fearful or desiring. Just a soft press of lips, and a tremble in the hand that cupped Nigel's cheek. Nikola kissed him, soft and gentle as a goodbye, and dropped his head to rest his brow against Nigel's. To press them together, the vampire in all his vibrant, scruffy glory, ever-shining, and the old man resting faded in his chair, slipping softly beyond the plane of sight forevermore.

"I'll rob a bank for you," Nikola promised quietly. "I've done some work with metamaterials since the Philadelphia Experiment. It'll be just like ..."

He stopped, voice cracking a little, and Nigel smiled blindly up at him. Smiled, and let himself fade for a moment, let himself slip away so that Nikola cupped only empty air, so that the vampire could pretend, just for a moment, that the warmth beneath his hand and his brow belonged to the youthful friend he'd left behind so many decades before. Nigel gave him that. Just for a moment.

"You should go," he said softly. Gently. "Been keeping an eye on you, you know. This Cabal have never been more than a day behind you. You should go, before they catch up."

Nikola laughed. Dark and cold, as he leaned back, dropping back on his heels so that only his hand still touched Nigel. Only his hand still connected them. "They've caught up before," he noted, with a grim little smile. "They've regretted it."

"I don't doubt it," Nigel said, with a hard little smile of his own. "You always were a dangerous sod in a corner. Right handy to have around, you were."

Nikola smiled at him, that soft, playful thing. "As were you, Nigel," he said, quietly. "It will be ... strange, without you."

Nigel smiled at that. "Yeah," he said. "But we're the Five, ain't we. Strange ... it's what we do." He reached up, took Nikola's hand gently from his jaw, feeling the power in his old friend's arm. He hadn't the strength to wrestle a fly, these days, certainly not a vampire. But Nikola let him take it away. Nikola let him push him away. "Now, go on with you, before someone has to come around and fish bullets out of my ceiling plaster. I've enough trouble keeping this place standing as it is."

Nikola stood. A lean, dark figure in the twilight, worn around the edges as he smiled down at Nigel, the shadows in youthful eyes for a second making him look as old as he ought to be. For a second making him seem as small.

Then the vampire grinned. That dazzling, gilded grin, that dark, dangerous light in his eyes. "Listen for the news, if you've time," Nikola told him. Promised him, oddly vehement. "I'll give you something to listen to before they hound me back out of the country. Something from the old days." A black, laughing grin. "You'll be the only one who'll guess how I did it."

"I'll be guessing nothing if you don't move now," Nigel reminded him, good-naturedly. Then he stopped. Stopped against the aching in his chest, and the faint tendrils of loss. The last time. A man shouldn't know it was the last time to see a friend. A man shouldn't have to know that. Shaking, watching the tremble in his pale, pale hands, Nigel reached out. Just to touch. Just once more.

Nikola caught his hand. Caught his hand, raised it to his lips, pressed it close. And oh, the wild, dark look in the vampire's eyes. The storm of grief behind that grin, behind that youthful face. Such a storm. Nikola never did anything by halves.

Nigel smiled. It wasn't so bad, to fade away, knowing you'd be remembered like that. Knowing you'd be mourned like that, by some wild, childish thing that would never fade. Knowing you'd be remembered by a friend.

"Goodbye," Nikola whispered, soft and ravaged in the darkness as he left, as he slipped away, a hunted shadow in the night. "Goodbye, old friend."

And Nigel smiled, and let himself fade into nothing in his wake. 

Just like old times.


End file.
